 | HOM: WordPlay | for everyone |
Words. Obviously the printed word rules my world, but I really couldn't say if that is an inherited trait or acquired.
I mentioned that Mom loved to read. Some of her other pleasures were Anagrams and Scrabble, Crossword and hidden word puzzles, & Cryptoquotes. These are some of my pleasures too. Scrabble is one of the few games I install on every compatible electronic gadget as soon as I buy it.
I remember playing Anagrams and Scrabble with Mom & Minnie, and I remember the quite-heated discussions we had over what constituted legals words - arguments that resulted in my getting Mom a Scrabble dictionary.
In going through the farm the other day, I found a second Scrabble dictionary. It belonged to Aunt Ellie and was inscribed to her. I guess she had the word bug too.
I don't know if Grandma Streit played scrabble or not, but I remember her doing crosswords. (Both Mom & Grandma also played a LOT of Solitaire!)
I found a nice Crossword dictionary that I had given to Mom, though she rarely needed it or used it. You could ask Mom for a ?-letter word meaning whatever, and after a second or two of thought she could tell you what it was.
I saved the old wooden Anagram set and her beat-up Scrabble set, and hope all the pieces are there. It doesn't matter if they aren't, though - the sentimental value is still enormous.
The last few years before Mom's eyes gave out we gave her giant Crossword puzzle books for all-occasion gifts. (Her last few special occasions, we gave her candy. She did enjoy chocolates, though Dad would loudly reprimand her for eating too many at a time and that kind of took the pleasure out of it for her.)
I suppose my love of words is why I am doing this blog, though it is more of a raw data dump and has no polish whatsoever. Perhaps one day I will go back and redo this in a more readable format. The HOM is being saved in a word processing document as I go, so at least I won't have to dig back through all the posts trying to piece it together again, and sometimes I correct or amend that doc without changing the blog posts.
TBC
I mentioned that Mom loved to read. Some of her other pleasures were Anagrams and Scrabble, Crossword and hidden word puzzles, & Cryptoquotes. These are some of my pleasures too. Scrabble is one of the few games I install on every compatible electronic gadget as soon as I buy it.
I remember playing Anagrams and Scrabble with Mom & Minnie, and I remember the quite-heated discussions we had over what constituted legals words - arguments that resulted in my getting Mom a Scrabble dictionary.
In going through the farm the other day, I found a second Scrabble dictionary. It belonged to Aunt Ellie and was inscribed to her. I guess she had the word bug too.
I don't know if Grandma Streit played scrabble or not, but I remember her doing crosswords. (Both Mom & Grandma also played a LOT of Solitaire!)
I found a nice Crossword dictionary that I had given to Mom, though she rarely needed it or used it. You could ask Mom for a ?-letter word meaning whatever, and after a second or two of thought she could tell you what it was.
I saved the old wooden Anagram set and her beat-up Scrabble set, and hope all the pieces are there. It doesn't matter if they aren't, though - the sentimental value is still enormous.
The last few years before Mom's eyes gave out we gave her giant Crossword puzzle books for all-occasion gifts. (Her last few special occasions, we gave her candy. She did enjoy chocolates, though Dad would loudly reprimand her for eating too many at a time and that kind of took the pleasure out of it for her.)
I suppose my love of words is why I am doing this blog, though it is more of a raw data dump and has no polish whatsoever. Perhaps one day I will go back and redo this in a more readable format. The HOM is being saved in a word processing document as I go, so at least I won't have to dig back through all the posts trying to piece it together again, and sometimes I correct or amend that doc without changing the blog posts.
TBC
| HOM: Farmer Tans | for everyone |
Dad's tan was pretty much limited to the backs of his hands and the lower part of his face and he usually got it when he was on the tractor. He always wore a long-sleeved shirt and when he was working off-tractor he wore gloves, and always wore a hat - usually a tin hard hat with a brim.
He wore the hard hat for shade and to save himself from bumps and knocks around machinery. He always referred to the old story of Bus Danford smacking his head on the tractor so hard that he was kinda nuts for a bit. I guess Bus, when he came to, went up to the house, bathed, dressed in his Sunday best and told his Mom, Jesse, he was going to go to town and get married. Bus, the confirmed bachelor, who avoided women...
Since Dad was already married, I guess he didn't want to take any chances!
Darrel, on the other hand, wore a ball cap and short sleeves much of the time and had a darker and wider-spread tan.
I remember one harvest evening at the end of a long hot summer, Darrel parked the combine at the end of the day, then took off his shirt and shook the dust out of it. His tan made it look like he was wearing a white shirt with short sleeves. And a lot of loose threads and some wrinkles...
I remember, though possibly not accurately, that the summer Jerry spent with us, he put in his first day handling bales on the wagon with his shirt off to get a tan, and Dad commenting about city kids and how they had to learn. I think Jerry's shirtlessness while haying was pretty short lived - hay is both dusty and scratchy and overall itchy.
My attempt at tanning while working was driving the tractor one teen-age afternoon. I was pretty well pleased when I came in - no burn or itch, and a nice uniform tan. I was less pleased when I got in the tub and it all washed off! I guess dust makes a pretty good sunblock.
When school started in the fall and there were programs that the parents were invited to, standing on the stage and looking out over the audience was kind of like looking at a multi-colored carton full of eggs; shiny white domes over the brown faces of the Ridenours and the Streits and the O'Connells and the Danfords in every other seat.
Farmer's tan is mostly history now. It seems like most of the modern farmers use tractors and combines and swathers and such with air conditioned cabs with tinted windows and AM/FM radios.
TBC
He wore the hard hat for shade and to save himself from bumps and knocks around machinery. He always referred to the old story of Bus Danford smacking his head on the tractor so hard that he was kinda nuts for a bit. I guess Bus, when he came to, went up to the house, bathed, dressed in his Sunday best and told his Mom, Jesse, he was going to go to town and get married. Bus, the confirmed bachelor, who avoided women...
Since Dad was already married, I guess he didn't want to take any chances!
Darrel, on the other hand, wore a ball cap and short sleeves much of the time and had a darker and wider-spread tan.
I remember one harvest evening at the end of a long hot summer, Darrel parked the combine at the end of the day, then took off his shirt and shook the dust out of it. His tan made it look like he was wearing a white shirt with short sleeves. And a lot of loose threads and some wrinkles...
I remember, though possibly not accurately, that the summer Jerry spent with us, he put in his first day handling bales on the wagon with his shirt off to get a tan, and Dad commenting about city kids and how they had to learn. I think Jerry's shirtlessness while haying was pretty short lived - hay is both dusty and scratchy and overall itchy.
My attempt at tanning while working was driving the tractor one teen-age afternoon. I was pretty well pleased when I came in - no burn or itch, and a nice uniform tan. I was less pleased when I got in the tub and it all washed off! I guess dust makes a pretty good sunblock.
When school started in the fall and there were programs that the parents were invited to, standing on the stage and looking out over the audience was kind of like looking at a multi-colored carton full of eggs; shiny white domes over the brown faces of the Ridenours and the Streits and the O'Connells and the Danfords in every other seat.
Farmer's tan is mostly history now. It seems like most of the modern farmers use tractors and combines and swathers and such with air conditioned cabs with tinted windows and AM/FM radios.
TBC
| HOM: Food Flights | for everyone |
Guess it's time to wander off onto a new branch of the tree.
A favorite hangout in Nampa was the Chinese restaurant. When we could afford it, we ate there, and my favorite meal was prawns and fried rice.
The prawns were served with hot Chinese mustard and lemon quarters, and when Pat dared me, I coated a slice of lemon with the mustard and ate it.
Not a good idea... The "Fruit of the poor lemon" isn't impossible to eat, but when you add Chinese mustard it comes pretty close. I managed it, however - once.
And that memory triggers a new path down history lane.
I was never wise in my ideas - Mom used to dose me with cod liver oil when I suffered from about anything from hang nails to head colds, and I hated the stuff. One morning I had the bright idea of mixing it with my orange juice. Bad, bad, idea, and to make it worse Mom made me drink it all anyway.
Two of her other standbys were Kaopectate and Milk of Magnesia. The Kao wasn't bad, the MOM was awful, and I found out the hard way that mixing it with milk made it worse and when mixed with orange juice it made me puke. Mom still wasn't sympathetic.
Which reminds me of my dislike of bread crusts, I tore them off and hid them under the edge of my plate. Brilliant idea, till Mom picked up the plate.
Buck became my handy food disposal unit for things I didn't like, since he sat beside my chair at mealtime. I just had to try to slip stuff to him when the folks were talking because he was kinda of a noisy eater.
He ate a lot of liver. I hated - still hate - liver, gizzards and other innards! He was pretty good with bread crusts and cauliflower too.
(Flash forward - I was working for Wards on their delivery truck and brown-bagging my lunches when the driver, Bob, stopped at the old Park Inn to eat their daily special. He derided my lunch and offered to buy "a good meal" for me too. When we went in, he ordered two specials. I asked him what the special was, and he said it didn't matter - you couldn't go wrong for the price. When the waitress flopped down two platters of fried liver he found out you could go wrong - so we went back out to the truck and shared my brown bag lunch. Speaking of the Park Inn - their cinnamon rolls were bigger than dinner plates...)
Good food memories? Grandma's dumplings, Mom's huckleberry pie & fried chicken and German Chocolate cake.
TBC
A favorite hangout in Nampa was the Chinese restaurant. When we could afford it, we ate there, and my favorite meal was prawns and fried rice.
The prawns were served with hot Chinese mustard and lemon quarters, and when Pat dared me, I coated a slice of lemon with the mustard and ate it.
Not a good idea... The "Fruit of the poor lemon" isn't impossible to eat, but when you add Chinese mustard it comes pretty close. I managed it, however - once.
And that memory triggers a new path down history lane.
I was never wise in my ideas - Mom used to dose me with cod liver oil when I suffered from about anything from hang nails to head colds, and I hated the stuff. One morning I had the bright idea of mixing it with my orange juice. Bad, bad, idea, and to make it worse Mom made me drink it all anyway.
Two of her other standbys were Kaopectate and Milk of Magnesia. The Kao wasn't bad, the MOM was awful, and I found out the hard way that mixing it with milk made it worse and when mixed with orange juice it made me puke. Mom still wasn't sympathetic.
Which reminds me of my dislike of bread crusts, I tore them off and hid them under the edge of my plate. Brilliant idea, till Mom picked up the plate.
Buck became my handy food disposal unit for things I didn't like, since he sat beside my chair at mealtime. I just had to try to slip stuff to him when the folks were talking because he was kinda of a noisy eater.
He ate a lot of liver. I hated - still hate - liver, gizzards and other innards! He was pretty good with bread crusts and cauliflower too.
(Flash forward - I was working for Wards on their delivery truck and brown-bagging my lunches when the driver, Bob, stopped at the old Park Inn to eat their daily special. He derided my lunch and offered to buy "a good meal" for me too. When we went in, he ordered two specials. I asked him what the special was, and he said it didn't matter - you couldn't go wrong for the price. When the waitress flopped down two platters of fried liver he found out you could go wrong - so we went back out to the truck and shared my brown bag lunch. Speaking of the Park Inn - their cinnamon rolls were bigger than dinner plates...)
Good food memories? Grandma's dumplings, Mom's huckleberry pie & fried chicken and German Chocolate cake.
TBC
| HOM: Icy Flashback | for everyone |
I was in high school that fall, probably 1963, when the family Thanksgiving get-together resulted in a waterfowl hunt the next day.
There were two boats of us - Paul & I in my boat, Rudy and a friend in his. We put in early the next morning where the old bridge was near Kehoe's Agate Shop, and it was cold enough that the river was covered in slush. We went out to the islands on the delta at the mouth of the river and set up shop in the snow.
We had barely gotten unloaded when two mallards landed. I got one, Rudy's friend got the other.
That was the entire bag for the day.
All of us were cold except Rudy, who was quite proud of his new insulated coveralls, and we tried to keep warm with a little fire while he extolled the virtues of his outfit.
Rudy's pride dropped along with his coveralls and body temperature however, when he had to wade out in the weather when nature called, and ended up squatting in the snow in his underwear with his coveralls in his arms. They didn't have a drop seat and weren't made for bathroom calls in knee-deep snow!
We stuck it out till the afternoon, and then called it quits. It was colder than it had been when we got out there and the geese were not flying at all..
Coming out in the morning, we left a trail in the slush with boats. The slush was now ice and since I was running the lead boat Paul & I set a fast pace in the narrow open leade heading for home and warmth. The drawback to my speeding was that my wake broke up the ice and closed the channel so Rudy had to poke along to keep from damaging his boat on the chunks.
Rudy. He had to deal with a lot of my callowness. I met him out fishing on the slough once, visited with him a minute, then cut in front of him to fish. Rude on my part, and thoughtless, but totally unintentional.
He & I got in a wrestling match once at Minnie Wendt's & I hurt his back. I didn't mean to, I was just goofing around, but Paul said it made Rudy pretty upset with me for a long time.
TBC
There were two boats of us - Paul & I in my boat, Rudy and a friend in his. We put in early the next morning where the old bridge was near Kehoe's Agate Shop, and it was cold enough that the river was covered in slush. We went out to the islands on the delta at the mouth of the river and set up shop in the snow.
We had barely gotten unloaded when two mallards landed. I got one, Rudy's friend got the other.
That was the entire bag for the day.
All of us were cold except Rudy, who was quite proud of his new insulated coveralls, and we tried to keep warm with a little fire while he extolled the virtues of his outfit.
Rudy's pride dropped along with his coveralls and body temperature however, when he had to wade out in the weather when nature called, and ended up squatting in the snow in his underwear with his coveralls in his arms. They didn't have a drop seat and weren't made for bathroom calls in knee-deep snow!
We stuck it out till the afternoon, and then called it quits. It was colder than it had been when we got out there and the geese were not flying at all..
Coming out in the morning, we left a trail in the slush with boats. The slush was now ice and since I was running the lead boat Paul & I set a fast pace in the narrow open leade heading for home and warmth. The drawback to my speeding was that my wake broke up the ice and closed the channel so Rudy had to poke along to keep from damaging his boat on the chunks.
Rudy. He had to deal with a lot of my callowness. I met him out fishing on the slough once, visited with him a minute, then cut in front of him to fish. Rude on my part, and thoughtless, but totally unintentional.
He & I got in a wrestling match once at Minnie Wendt's & I hurt his back. I didn't mean to, I was just goofing around, but Paul said it made Rudy pretty upset with me for a long time.
TBC
| HOM: Professing | for everyone |
Hodgepodge recollections, the good, the bad, and the funny.
Whenever I see a copy of the old red textbook, Hick's Federal Union, I flash back to MSU.
The course required us to get the latest version of the text, but the prof used an older version for class, and compounded things by READING passages from the text in class. No lecture, no discussion, just reading.
If you wanted to simplify the class, you got a copy of the book from a former student that had the passages the prof read highlighted - every question in every test was over the highlighted material and you could skip the boredom of his "lectures"...
Then there was Dr. Tillotson, at NNC. He taught math and made it both interesting and understandable.
His passion for explanation and his dedication made for a few laughs - he was writing a long calculation out on the blackboard, sidestepping along as he wrote and explained, when he put his foot in the wastebasket. Rather than interrupt himself or the student's train of thought, he kept clumping along with it on his foot till he was done writing AND done explaining. When he was sure the student he was doing this for really understood the calculation, he sat down and unwedged his foot and resumed class.
The world needs more teachers like him...
I mentioned Dr. Jones. Years later I was talking to a friend who was a student of his when Jones walked up and joined the conversation. Commandeered it, actually, because he wanted to talk to my friend. I was just sitting there when he swiveled, pointed at me, and asked "What do you think of capital punishment?"
When I said "No repeat offenders", he stared at me a minute, then got up and walked away without another word.
Odd. I remember the extremes in the teachers, those in the middle have faded away. If i was to categorize, I'd say that the math/science teachers and the English teachers were the best, the religion/Social Science/History teachers the dryest
On a side note, I tried to always have a girl buddy who could type. My typing has always sucked, so i would peck out or scribble out my papers and then sweet-talk someone intro typing them up neatly for me. I wish I had taken typing in high school...
TBC
Whenever I see a copy of the old red textbook, Hick's Federal Union, I flash back to MSU.
The course required us to get the latest version of the text, but the prof used an older version for class, and compounded things by READING passages from the text in class. No lecture, no discussion, just reading.
If you wanted to simplify the class, you got a copy of the book from a former student that had the passages the prof read highlighted - every question in every test was over the highlighted material and you could skip the boredom of his "lectures"...
Then there was Dr. Tillotson, at NNC. He taught math and made it both interesting and understandable.
His passion for explanation and his dedication made for a few laughs - he was writing a long calculation out on the blackboard, sidestepping along as he wrote and explained, when he put his foot in the wastebasket. Rather than interrupt himself or the student's train of thought, he kept clumping along with it on his foot till he was done writing AND done explaining. When he was sure the student he was doing this for really understood the calculation, he sat down and unwedged his foot and resumed class.
The world needs more teachers like him...
I mentioned Dr. Jones. Years later I was talking to a friend who was a student of his when Jones walked up and joined the conversation. Commandeered it, actually, because he wanted to talk to my friend. I was just sitting there when he swiveled, pointed at me, and asked "What do you think of capital punishment?"
When I said "No repeat offenders", he stared at me a minute, then got up and walked away without another word.
Odd. I remember the extremes in the teachers, those in the middle have faded away. If i was to categorize, I'd say that the math/science teachers and the English teachers were the best, the religion/Social Science/History teachers the dryest
On a side note, I tried to always have a girl buddy who could type. My typing has always sucked, so i would peck out or scribble out my papers and then sweet-talk someone intro typing them up neatly for me. I wish I had taken typing in high school...
TBC
| HOM: NNC Year Two, Part One | for everyone |
Bill decided I needed to move on, so the second year I moved upstairs and roomed with Ken Ivers, from Fortine. He was fresh out of the army & I was fresh off the farm, so it made for some interesting times. More on this later.
I guess the highlights of that year were mostly humorous. I got to be good friends with Pat McConnell, the Wing Adviser. He was the one charged with keeping order in the wing, and was unofficially referred to as the "Wing Ding". I was probably his worst Problem Child.
I ran around with Vern Brewer, who was my age but with many times the miles & experience I had.
His folks had a farm up in Sand Hollow and he had three cute sisters and a couple of horses, so I went up there with him as often as I could. (I dated his sister Cheryl a little - Cheryl went on to marry Neal Colby and live in Kalispell.)
Vern & I would get in scuffles, he would throw me around the room, and Pat would yell at us to hold the noise down and knock off thumping on the walls on floor. The one time Vern had mercy on me was when his sisters were around - then he let me win one of our matches.
Vern wasn't involved in the fudge episode, though, but Pat was.
I had been given some old and raunchy fudge. It didn't taste good but I hated to throw it away, so I took it down to the community bathroom, molded it into little brown logs, piled them in a rounded heap in the shower, and ran hot water on them till they sort of melted and oozed.
I was back in my room in total innocence when the fiuss started - one of the more emotional kids found the mess, jumped to the conclusion that the pile was somebody's body waste, and yelled for Pat.
Pat walked in, took one look, remembered my mentioning having chocolate, put two and two together and came down and got me. He led me into the bathroom in front of Randy, the reporter of the crime, and said he knew I did it so I better clean it up.
Randy was peeling off paper towels to hand to me when I walked over to the shower, scooped up a handful of the lumpy brown mess, threw it in the trash - and licked my hand.
Randy turned white, Pat turned red, and I started choking - from laughter.
Later, Pat said he wished he had known I was going to do that - he would have substituted the real thing for the chocolate!
Probably my worst trick was totally accidental.In the late spring, someone shot a pheasant and dumped the carcass by the dorm. I saw it, and tossed it up on the porch roof over the side door and forgot about it - till a week or so later when I saw Mike and Don, whose room was right over that porch, hauling all their stuff out in the hall.
I asked them what was up and they said their room smelled so bad they thought they better get their bedding washed and the floor mopped and scrubbed....
Their window was right over that flat porch roof, and by chance the pheasant had landed against the wall under it and wasn't visible from inside. I figured I knew where the smell was coming from, but couldn't see the carcass, so I just commented that the smell seemed to be coming in the window.
Mike agreed, so he opened the screen, looked out, saw the dead bird, stuck his leg out and kicked the juicy mess off the roof - right onto the back of a guy sunbathing, maggots & all!
After the yelling match died down, I joined them in wondering what low-life joker had put the pheasant there!
Once, I had the bright idea of balancing a glass of water on the top of the door next to ours, which was standing partly open. That backfired when the guy in the room reached up and tipped the glass off the door onto me as soon as I set it there. He saw more humor in it than I did...
I think it was this year that I took the philosophy class from Dr Jones. Jones stated that there was no such thing as an absolute truth, and some smart aleck asked him if that was an absolute truth.
This was also the year I took a date to the sweetheart banquet, a candle-lit semi-formal affair, and when someone pass the rolls to me they let the napkin in the bowl dangle in a candle, so all of a sudden I had handful of flames and was trying to blow them out.
I think I'll discuss dating in another post - let's just say that this one wasn't all that atypical. I attract oddness like a magnet attracts iron filings.
TBC
I guess the highlights of that year were mostly humorous. I got to be good friends with Pat McConnell, the Wing Adviser. He was the one charged with keeping order in the wing, and was unofficially referred to as the "Wing Ding". I was probably his worst Problem Child.
I ran around with Vern Brewer, who was my age but with many times the miles & experience I had.
His folks had a farm up in Sand Hollow and he had three cute sisters and a couple of horses, so I went up there with him as often as I could. (I dated his sister Cheryl a little - Cheryl went on to marry Neal Colby and live in Kalispell.)
Vern & I would get in scuffles, he would throw me around the room, and Pat would yell at us to hold the noise down and knock off thumping on the walls on floor. The one time Vern had mercy on me was when his sisters were around - then he let me win one of our matches.
Vern wasn't involved in the fudge episode, though, but Pat was.
I had been given some old and raunchy fudge. It didn't taste good but I hated to throw it away, so I took it down to the community bathroom, molded it into little brown logs, piled them in a rounded heap in the shower, and ran hot water on them till they sort of melted and oozed.
I was back in my room in total innocence when the fiuss started - one of the more emotional kids found the mess, jumped to the conclusion that the pile was somebody's body waste, and yelled for Pat.
Pat walked in, took one look, remembered my mentioning having chocolate, put two and two together and came down and got me. He led me into the bathroom in front of Randy, the reporter of the crime, and said he knew I did it so I better clean it up.
Randy was peeling off paper towels to hand to me when I walked over to the shower, scooped up a handful of the lumpy brown mess, threw it in the trash - and licked my hand.
Randy turned white, Pat turned red, and I started choking - from laughter.
Later, Pat said he wished he had known I was going to do that - he would have substituted the real thing for the chocolate!
Probably my worst trick was totally accidental.In the late spring, someone shot a pheasant and dumped the carcass by the dorm. I saw it, and tossed it up on the porch roof over the side door and forgot about it - till a week or so later when I saw Mike and Don, whose room was right over that porch, hauling all their stuff out in the hall.
I asked them what was up and they said their room smelled so bad they thought they better get their bedding washed and the floor mopped and scrubbed....
Their window was right over that flat porch roof, and by chance the pheasant had landed against the wall under it and wasn't visible from inside. I figured I knew where the smell was coming from, but couldn't see the carcass, so I just commented that the smell seemed to be coming in the window.
Mike agreed, so he opened the screen, looked out, saw the dead bird, stuck his leg out and kicked the juicy mess off the roof - right onto the back of a guy sunbathing, maggots & all!
After the yelling match died down, I joined them in wondering what low-life joker had put the pheasant there!
Once, I had the bright idea of balancing a glass of water on the top of the door next to ours, which was standing partly open. That backfired when the guy in the room reached up and tipped the glass off the door onto me as soon as I set it there. He saw more humor in it than I did...
I think it was this year that I took the philosophy class from Dr Jones. Jones stated that there was no such thing as an absolute truth, and some smart aleck asked him if that was an absolute truth.
This was also the year I took a date to the sweetheart banquet, a candle-lit semi-formal affair, and when someone pass the rolls to me they let the napkin in the bowl dangle in a candle, so all of a sudden I had handful of flames and was trying to blow them out.
I think I'll discuss dating in another post - let's just say that this one wasn't all that atypical. I attract oddness like a magnet attracts iron filings.
TBC
| HOM: Still Remembering | for everyone |
Buck, My little Spaniel buddy. He slept by my bed at night & went with me on my daytime excursions.
He had a few intestinal problems - probably because he would eat anything he could beg or steal or scrounge and thought was food.
Episodes that stick out in memory? I was tossing him bits of food and tossed him a spool of thread - and he swallowed it! The followup was that a few days later he came in with a followup of his own - a length of thread dangling out from under his tail. Mom saw it, grabbed it and jerked, but the thread was tough and didn't break & he yipped. Weird, but the thread unwound in him and took a while to work through his system so he had to be met at the door with scissors every time he had a BM. He eventually puked up the wooden spool - much the worse for wear! (No, I didn't fess up - I lied and said he grabbed the spool when it was accidentally knocked off the table.)
Once Jean O'Connell was visiting with Mom at the kitchen table. Buck was lying under the table and I was playing close by, when Jean casually put her hand up over her nose. A moment later Mom gasped, got a funny look on her face, and told me to put Buck outside, he had gas. After Jean left, Mom asked me if it was me or the dog...
One holiday, Mom set the plate of turkey on the table a bit too close to the edge - the end of a drumstick stuck out. Buck grabbed it and took off for my bedroom with Mom in hot pursuit. She won the race but threw the drumstick away anyway.
The harvest crew was getting ready for lunch at the house and the kitchen was crowded. Mom was a little flustered and my dog was underfoot, so she told me to "put that damn Buck outside". When she turned around and saw Buck Weaver standing behind her with a strange look on his face her fluster factor peaked out. I think that was the only time I ever heard Mom stammer...
TBC
He had a few intestinal problems - probably because he would eat anything he could beg or steal or scrounge and thought was food.
Episodes that stick out in memory? I was tossing him bits of food and tossed him a spool of thread - and he swallowed it! The followup was that a few days later he came in with a followup of his own - a length of thread dangling out from under his tail. Mom saw it, grabbed it and jerked, but the thread was tough and didn't break & he yipped. Weird, but the thread unwound in him and took a while to work through his system so he had to be met at the door with scissors every time he had a BM. He eventually puked up the wooden spool - much the worse for wear! (No, I didn't fess up - I lied and said he grabbed the spool when it was accidentally knocked off the table.)
Once Jean O'Connell was visiting with Mom at the kitchen table. Buck was lying under the table and I was playing close by, when Jean casually put her hand up over her nose. A moment later Mom gasped, got a funny look on her face, and told me to put Buck outside, he had gas. After Jean left, Mom asked me if it was me or the dog...
One holiday, Mom set the plate of turkey on the table a bit too close to the edge - the end of a drumstick stuck out. Buck grabbed it and took off for my bedroom with Mom in hot pursuit. She won the race but threw the drumstick away anyway.
The harvest crew was getting ready for lunch at the house and the kitchen was crowded. Mom was a little flustered and my dog was underfoot, so she told me to "put that damn Buck outside". When she turned around and saw Buck Weaver standing behind her with a strange look on his face her fluster factor peaked out. I think that was the only time I ever heard Mom stammer...
TBC
| HOM: Flashing Back | for everyone |
I remember:
Getting a fancy pair of gold colored cap pistols with pearl grips, black belt & gold-colored metal holsters, and standing in the "front porch" that is now part of the living room, practicing fast draw. I'd read about putting a quarter on the back of your hand at waist level and drawing the pistol before the quarter fell to the floor. I found that it was really easy to do as long as I flipped the quarter ceiling-high when I drew.
Grandma Ridenour staying with us after she sold her house and could not live alone. I remember her making Mom cry. I remember her being moved into a private rest home in town on the west side. I remember having a horrendous crush on Helen Cabbage, the daughter of the people that ran the place, and getting baseball lessons from her brother Frank.. This was about my eighth grade year.
Shortly after I got my first Black Lab, Mike, Mom put a box of groceries on the floor in the kitchen. My faithful old Spaniel, Buck, stuck his nose in the box looking for something to steal and Mike knocked him clear under the kitchen table.
Using a rubber-band shooter to hunt flies on that porch.
Shooting a cousin in the face with a rubber band and losing the shooter permanently.
Mom working in the cellar with the eggs, "candling" them and weighing them while I tunneled in the dirt walls to make caves and roads for my toys soldiers. I remember resenting Dad for making me stop "before I undermined the foundations and the house caved in!"
Asking for an electric train for Christmas and being disappointed at getting skis instead, and then a year or so later getting the train, and Dad getting me a big piece of plywood to mount the tracks on.
Getting a hood from an ancient car as a gift from the McElroys to use as a sled, and it being too heavy for me to pull up the hill.
Dale R. & I playing with Ian's old pump .22 and 16 gauge on the porch, pointing them at each other and clicking away till Dad chewed us out and made us stop because he had this strange idea that doing that with real guns was a stupid thing to do even if they were empty.
Helping Dad fill the bins with hog feed. The bins were about six feet high, four feet wide, and 12 feet long. He would work in the truck feeding ingredients into a grinder and I would be perched up on the bins leveling out the feed as it dropped out of the auger. I remember him noticing that the wind was carrying the exhaust from the diesel straight to an open bedroom window in the house and him going in and making Mom close it. I remember the Riedel's came by to see me and him shutting down the grinder so I could go play, and then his being angry about doing it and saying he did it to keep peace in the family.
Using the apples that fell out of the tree by my bedroom window as BB gun targets.
Shooting a bluebird by mistake when I was after sparrows, and burying it in a tin can in the garden, and then being appalled at the odor when I dug it back up a few days later.
Sitting under the kitchen table and reading comics as Mom cooked, and keeping a stash of comics on a little shelf under the table top.
Uncle Bill, after a holiday meal, curling up on the floor in the living room for a nap. Uncle Bill, sitting backwards in the chair in the kitchen while Mom cut his hair, the same chair where she did mine & Dad's and most of the neighbor men & gave permanents to the farm wives. I remember being thirsty and grabbing a glass with the permanent mix Mom used and how bad it tasted.
Mom had a set of colored aluminum glasses, and over the years they got pretty scratched up inside. I remember cousin Rose drinking Koolaid? - maybe - out of the silver one, and the look on her face when glanced into it and commented on the big wad of dog hair stuck on the bottom. I also remember Mom's frantic "WHAT?" and dash over to the table to grab the glass, and the smack I got from her while she told Rose it was only scratches on the metal and not hair.
Rose refusing to go for walks with me after I ran "accidentally" into her with my bicycle
Wiring old, old, license plates over the good plates on the car as a joke. Putting boards with nails in them under the wheels of the neighbor's cars for the same reason.
Uncle Bill giving me some magazines with photos of topless native ladies in them, and me hiding them under the house, and them disappearing a day or so after mom saw them.
Lying on the back window ledge of Dad's Ford at the drive-in movies until I got too tall to fit there, and pestering Dad for the Juicy Fruit gum he always carried.
Going to the Catholic school. mom went there till she married Dad, then they started going to the Central Christian church while they left me at the catholic school. For some reason, I didn't get along with the nuns and was shortly going along with Mom & Dad. I remember having fun with the pastor's name, O. C. Harris. We would be near him and I would yell "Oh, See!", the pastor would look to see what I was pointing to, and Mom would smack me.
Hiding little things in the trim around the closet in my bed room.
Shooting the 30-30 for the first time. I guess it was Darrel's, as this was before Dad bought one for me, and it was kept in the bedroom where I was forbidden to touch it. Mom went to Riedel's for something, maybe 1/2 a mile away as the crow flies, so I snuck in, grabbed it and a cartridge, went out and set up a beer can (a plentiful target in those days) and shot it. I was admiring the hole in the can when I looked up and saw Mom coming back home at about 3x the speed she left. It was touch and go, but by the time she was out of the car I had the gun away and an innocent look and the explanation that it must have been hunters she heard shoot.
I guess the next time I shot the rifle, she must have gone with someone else because the car was there, and I had the brilliant idea of rolling the window part way down and shooting from inside the car to muffle the sound. Did you say something? Sorry, I am a little deaf...
Putting the garden hose in the furrows in the field close to the house and creating little rivers in them, and carving out toy boats & canoes to float in them. That only lasted a few weeks, till Dad got the electric bill, but it was sure fun. Actually, I still enjoy playing with running water - when the snow starts to melt and the gutter in front of the store is full of ice I enjoy hacking out channels for the melt-off to collect in and flow to the drain at the corner. No toy boats though, I get a little too self-conscious for that.
I remember the summer cousin Jerry spent with us. Mom divided up the dresser in my bedroom, half was his, half mine. When I found out that his half sometimes contained Playboy magazines I expanded my reading (looking?) habits. I was twelve that summer, and it was an educational one.
Someone commenting to Dad that I took good care of my guns, and him replying that I sure did, and that he was surprised. I guess I was a little careless with my possessions. Once in a while he would get after me and make me lube my bike and pump up the tires & I was always surprised at how much easier it was to pedal afterward, but I never did do that on my own. He always had to make me.
Dad working in the field and Mom & I going out to visit him. He decided to have me do the work while he & Mom visited, so he put me on the tractor with detailed directions and away I went. The detailed directions involved using a low gear and going pretty slow, so I shifted up and moved right along till I hit the hill and the tractor bogged down till I had to stop and shift. After I did that for three consecutive rounds Dad ran out of patience and sent me home. Story of my life -seems like I always have time to do things over, but never have the patience to do them right the first time.
------------
Okay, I guess the worst of the pent-up memory storm is over. If this repeats stuff I wrote before, tough. It was a sleepless night.
TBC
Getting a fancy pair of gold colored cap pistols with pearl grips, black belt & gold-colored metal holsters, and standing in the "front porch" that is now part of the living room, practicing fast draw. I'd read about putting a quarter on the back of your hand at waist level and drawing the pistol before the quarter fell to the floor. I found that it was really easy to do as long as I flipped the quarter ceiling-high when I drew.
Grandma Ridenour staying with us after she sold her house and could not live alone. I remember her making Mom cry. I remember her being moved into a private rest home in town on the west side. I remember having a horrendous crush on Helen Cabbage, the daughter of the people that ran the place, and getting baseball lessons from her brother Frank.. This was about my eighth grade year.
Shortly after I got my first Black Lab, Mike, Mom put a box of groceries on the floor in the kitchen. My faithful old Spaniel, Buck, stuck his nose in the box looking for something to steal and Mike knocked him clear under the kitchen table.
Using a rubber-band shooter to hunt flies on that porch.
Shooting a cousin in the face with a rubber band and losing the shooter permanently.
Mom working in the cellar with the eggs, "candling" them and weighing them while I tunneled in the dirt walls to make caves and roads for my toys soldiers. I remember resenting Dad for making me stop "before I undermined the foundations and the house caved in!"
Asking for an electric train for Christmas and being disappointed at getting skis instead, and then a year or so later getting the train, and Dad getting me a big piece of plywood to mount the tracks on.
Getting a hood from an ancient car as a gift from the McElroys to use as a sled, and it being too heavy for me to pull up the hill.
Dale R. & I playing with Ian's old pump .22 and 16 gauge on the porch, pointing them at each other and clicking away till Dad chewed us out and made us stop because he had this strange idea that doing that with real guns was a stupid thing to do even if they were empty.
Helping Dad fill the bins with hog feed. The bins were about six feet high, four feet wide, and 12 feet long. He would work in the truck feeding ingredients into a grinder and I would be perched up on the bins leveling out the feed as it dropped out of the auger. I remember him noticing that the wind was carrying the exhaust from the diesel straight to an open bedroom window in the house and him going in and making Mom close it. I remember the Riedel's came by to see me and him shutting down the grinder so I could go play, and then his being angry about doing it and saying he did it to keep peace in the family.
Using the apples that fell out of the tree by my bedroom window as BB gun targets.
Shooting a bluebird by mistake when I was after sparrows, and burying it in a tin can in the garden, and then being appalled at the odor when I dug it back up a few days later.
Sitting under the kitchen table and reading comics as Mom cooked, and keeping a stash of comics on a little shelf under the table top.
Uncle Bill, after a holiday meal, curling up on the floor in the living room for a nap. Uncle Bill, sitting backwards in the chair in the kitchen while Mom cut his hair, the same chair where she did mine & Dad's and most of the neighbor men & gave permanents to the farm wives. I remember being thirsty and grabbing a glass with the permanent mix Mom used and how bad it tasted.
Mom had a set of colored aluminum glasses, and over the years they got pretty scratched up inside. I remember cousin Rose drinking Koolaid? - maybe - out of the silver one, and the look on her face when glanced into it and commented on the big wad of dog hair stuck on the bottom. I also remember Mom's frantic "WHAT?" and dash over to the table to grab the glass, and the smack I got from her while she told Rose it was only scratches on the metal and not hair.
Rose refusing to go for walks with me after I ran "accidentally" into her with my bicycle
Wiring old, old, license plates over the good plates on the car as a joke. Putting boards with nails in them under the wheels of the neighbor's cars for the same reason.
Uncle Bill giving me some magazines with photos of topless native ladies in them, and me hiding them under the house, and them disappearing a day or so after mom saw them.
Lying on the back window ledge of Dad's Ford at the drive-in movies until I got too tall to fit there, and pestering Dad for the Juicy Fruit gum he always carried.
Going to the Catholic school. mom went there till she married Dad, then they started going to the Central Christian church while they left me at the catholic school. For some reason, I didn't get along with the nuns and was shortly going along with Mom & Dad. I remember having fun with the pastor's name, O. C. Harris. We would be near him and I would yell "Oh, See!", the pastor would look to see what I was pointing to, and Mom would smack me.
Hiding little things in the trim around the closet in my bed room.
Shooting the 30-30 for the first time. I guess it was Darrel's, as this was before Dad bought one for me, and it was kept in the bedroom where I was forbidden to touch it. Mom went to Riedel's for something, maybe 1/2 a mile away as the crow flies, so I snuck in, grabbed it and a cartridge, went out and set up a beer can (a plentiful target in those days) and shot it. I was admiring the hole in the can when I looked up and saw Mom coming back home at about 3x the speed she left. It was touch and go, but by the time she was out of the car I had the gun away and an innocent look and the explanation that it must have been hunters she heard shoot.
I guess the next time I shot the rifle, she must have gone with someone else because the car was there, and I had the brilliant idea of rolling the window part way down and shooting from inside the car to muffle the sound. Did you say something? Sorry, I am a little deaf...
Putting the garden hose in the furrows in the field close to the house and creating little rivers in them, and carving out toy boats & canoes to float in them. That only lasted a few weeks, till Dad got the electric bill, but it was sure fun. Actually, I still enjoy playing with running water - when the snow starts to melt and the gutter in front of the store is full of ice I enjoy hacking out channels for the melt-off to collect in and flow to the drain at the corner. No toy boats though, I get a little too self-conscious for that.
I remember the summer cousin Jerry spent with us. Mom divided up the dresser in my bedroom, half was his, half mine. When I found out that his half sometimes contained Playboy magazines I expanded my reading (looking?) habits. I was twelve that summer, and it was an educational one.
Someone commenting to Dad that I took good care of my guns, and him replying that I sure did, and that he was surprised. I guess I was a little careless with my possessions. Once in a while he would get after me and make me lube my bike and pump up the tires & I was always surprised at how much easier it was to pedal afterward, but I never did do that on my own. He always had to make me.
Dad working in the field and Mom & I going out to visit him. He decided to have me do the work while he & Mom visited, so he put me on the tractor with detailed directions and away I went. The detailed directions involved using a low gear and going pretty slow, so I shifted up and moved right along till I hit the hill and the tractor bogged down till I had to stop and shift. After I did that for three consecutive rounds Dad ran out of patience and sent me home. Story of my life -seems like I always have time to do things over, but never have the patience to do them right the first time.
------------
Okay, I guess the worst of the pent-up memory storm is over. If this repeats stuff I wrote before, tough. It was a sleepless night.
TBC
| HOM: Hiding Out | for everyone |
Expect flashbacks. Disordered flashbacks.
Digging through the mix of objects and memories at the old homestead has unearthed a trove of treasures and skeletons.
Solitude: as I've said, I need it more than most and I think the taste for it developed early for me.
I loved creating hideouts, using a blanket over a card table in the living room or a clothes closet when I was quite young, progressing to sheets over the clotheslines, hollowed out spaces in hay stacks and little campsites hidden in the fencerows & hedges around the farm. They all tended to be fitted out with books & bedding, and the later ones had deluxe things like bottles of water and a portable radio.
The biggest and best were in the hay bales tacked up in the shed. The shed furnished the roof and the bales made up the floor, walls & furnishings. Caveat, though: if you play in a grass house, don't play with matches unless you want to give yourself a heart attack.
There used to be a grown-out thicket of pie cherry bushes in the corner by the driveway that had a neat little clearing that made a cool play spot, and there was a clump of trees along the line fence between us & Riedel's where I hatcheted out a little clearing and rigged a shelter and had a lot of camping fun.
An aside. Dad used to burn the stubble and the brush along the edges of the farm in the spring and being a bit of a pyromaniac I loved helping him.
Once I got a bit too involved, though - the cherry bushes were on the south side of the driveway but the north side had a little patch of buck brush & grass Dad wanted to burn, so I tossed a match into the middle of the patch. The grass burned, the brush didn't, so I decided a little gasoline might help. Dad kept two big 250 gallon tanks, diesel & gas, by the granary, so I grabbed a quart can and the gas tank hose, filled the can, took it over and tossed it on the unburned buckbrush.
I was standing at the edge of the brush fumbling for a match when the gas fumes hit a hot coal. After the whoosh, the brush was burning nicely and I had no eyebrows, rosy cheeks and singed bangs! I decided then, pardon the pun, that playing with fire wasn't such a hot idea.
Anyway, I think the "hideout" phase I was in eventually evolved into this office I am sitting in, so maybe I never did outgrow it.
TBC
Digging through the mix of objects and memories at the old homestead has unearthed a trove of treasures and skeletons.
Solitude: as I've said, I need it more than most and I think the taste for it developed early for me.
I loved creating hideouts, using a blanket over a card table in the living room or a clothes closet when I was quite young, progressing to sheets over the clotheslines, hollowed out spaces in hay stacks and little campsites hidden in the fencerows & hedges around the farm. They all tended to be fitted out with books & bedding, and the later ones had deluxe things like bottles of water and a portable radio.
The biggest and best were in the hay bales tacked up in the shed. The shed furnished the roof and the bales made up the floor, walls & furnishings. Caveat, though: if you play in a grass house, don't play with matches unless you want to give yourself a heart attack.
There used to be a grown-out thicket of pie cherry bushes in the corner by the driveway that had a neat little clearing that made a cool play spot, and there was a clump of trees along the line fence between us & Riedel's where I hatcheted out a little clearing and rigged a shelter and had a lot of camping fun.
An aside. Dad used to burn the stubble and the brush along the edges of the farm in the spring and being a bit of a pyromaniac I loved helping him.
Once I got a bit too involved, though - the cherry bushes were on the south side of the driveway but the north side had a little patch of buck brush & grass Dad wanted to burn, so I tossed a match into the middle of the patch. The grass burned, the brush didn't, so I decided a little gasoline might help. Dad kept two big 250 gallon tanks, diesel & gas, by the granary, so I grabbed a quart can and the gas tank hose, filled the can, took it over and tossed it on the unburned buckbrush.
I was standing at the edge of the brush fumbling for a match when the gas fumes hit a hot coal. After the whoosh, the brush was burning nicely and I had no eyebrows, rosy cheeks and singed bangs! I decided then, pardon the pun, that playing with fire wasn't such a hot idea.
Anyway, I think the "hideout" phase I was in eventually evolved into this office I am sitting in, so maybe I never did outgrow it.
TBC
| The Crash(es) | for everyone |
Originally, I was playing ET and the game locked up. NBD, just needed a hard reset.
Boot to Windows XP desktop, another lockup & hard reset.
The next boot gets to the screen-bottom progress bar - and stops.
Reset. Does a POST. Stops
Reset. Recognizes video card. Stops.
Reset. Dead!
Motherboard problem, obviously. So - replace just the MB (no longer made) and hope the CPU/ram/video cards are good or bite the bullet and get new parts?
Seemed like less gamble to get new parts, so I got a new Asus M2n Deluxe MB, an AMD X2 6000+ cpu, and new OCZ ram.
Install was relatively fast & easy & happily the video cards were still good - but two of the three hard drives I used were toast. I am usually pretty careful about duplicating data but I was a little remiss about using the third drive, which was the one survived. Oh well. If it wasn't for Syncback I would be worse off. Freeware painless data backup!
So - two new hard drives installed, XP installed, data transferred from the old HD, so up, up and away, right?
Nope. this is when the comedy of errors started.
NEVER work on a computer when there is a phone, a kid, a puppy, or any other distraction around! You click the wrong buttons!
Skipping gory details, lets just say that I installed XP nine times AND messed up the XP installed on the laptop before I got it right, and I still have my fingers crossed....
Let me mention the program that helped me fix my goofups and saved me from a few extra XP installs - BARTPE -Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD.
Download the program, build a rescue CD/DVD, boot to the cd and Bingo! - full access to your HD if there are no mechanical problems. It let me go in and run my usual file management and editing programs to fix the boot.ini files I had messed up.
It has been an interesting week or two - and having access to a second computer was invaluable!
I am going to keep using Syncback daily, but now I need to look into a program that will let me mirror my boot drive or at least make an image of it so I can maybe bypass all the install hassles.
Anyway, hopefully - I am back online.
Boot to Windows XP desktop, another lockup & hard reset.
The next boot gets to the screen-bottom progress bar - and stops.
Reset. Does a POST. Stops
Reset. Recognizes video card. Stops.
Reset. Dead!
Motherboard problem, obviously. So - replace just the MB (no longer made) and hope the CPU/ram/video cards are good or bite the bullet and get new parts?
Seemed like less gamble to get new parts, so I got a new Asus M2n Deluxe MB, an AMD X2 6000+ cpu, and new OCZ ram.
Install was relatively fast & easy & happily the video cards were still good - but two of the three hard drives I used were toast. I am usually pretty careful about duplicating data but I was a little remiss about using the third drive, which was the one survived. Oh well. If it wasn't for Syncback I would be worse off. Freeware painless data backup!
So - two new hard drives installed, XP installed, data transferred from the old HD, so up, up and away, right?
Nope. this is when the comedy of errors started.
NEVER work on a computer when there is a phone, a kid, a puppy, or any other distraction around! You click the wrong buttons!
Skipping gory details, lets just say that I installed XP nine times AND messed up the XP installed on the laptop before I got it right, and I still have my fingers crossed....
Let me mention the program that helped me fix my goofups and saved me from a few extra XP installs - BARTPE -Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD.
Download the program, build a rescue CD/DVD, boot to the cd and Bingo! - full access to your HD if there are no mechanical problems. It let me go in and run my usual file management and editing programs to fix the boot.ini files I had messed up.
It has been an interesting week or two - and having access to a second computer was invaluable!
I am going to keep using Syncback daily, but now I need to look into a program that will let me mirror my boot drive or at least make an image of it so I can maybe bypass all the install hassles.
Anyway, hopefully - I am back online.
| Ides & Betides | for everyone |
I'm with J. Caesar - March ain't my favorite month. Not just the Ides, either, March seems to betide bad times.
March 2006, Mom died.
March 2007, Got my thumb decapitated
March 2008, Dad died and my computer fried...
Anyway, the slow slog through the legacy is about over, the contents of the old house are pretty well triaged, a new Motherboard, CPU & Ram are due in here today and the stumble down the homestead branch of memory lane is settling out to where I might be able to get back to the HOM.
March 2006, Mom died.
March 2007, Got my thumb decapitated
March 2008, Dad died and my computer fried...
Anyway, the slow slog through the legacy is about over, the contents of the old house are pretty well triaged, a new Motherboard, CPU & Ram are due in here today and the stumble down the homestead branch of memory lane is settling out to where I might be able to get back to the HOM.
| HOM: NNC #3 | for everyone |
I liked that high-desert country in SW Idaho. Sand, sandstone and sagebrush was a real contrast to this Flathead country and the canyons and buttes were my "call of the wild".
One place I liked was Jump Creek Canyon, out SW of Nampa, a deep, narrow and interesting slot in that sandstone country.
I was told that the pigeons on the rim looked like sparrows from below, that depths & distances were hard to judge, and that the sandstone was treacherous. Trial & error proved all of those things true..
Going in from the mouth of the canyon, you had a choice of climbing the floor or going up the outside and exploring the tops of the walls. We did both, various times.
I have mentioned I don't like heights: that canyon is one reason. Picture high sandstone cliffs dropping onto a steep slope of debris that slanted into a narrow streambed at the bottom and formed a stylized "V" in cross section.
Two of us hiked up the creek bed in the bottom, climbing and exploring the ledges and hollows in the walls above the slopes of debris. We spotted what appeared to be a cave part way up one of the walls and decided to try climbing to it, but disagreed as to the best way up.
My friend started climbing from right below the cave but I moved around a spur of rock to the right and saw a series of small ledges that looked like an easy climb. I dumped my jacket & some extra junk at the base and started up.
I guess I was was maybe 25-30 above the debris slope when I ran out of ledges, so I stopped to survey the situation, standing on one small ledge and holding on to another with both hands. That's when the ledge my feet were on peeled off the cliff.
The big chunk of sandstone landed on my coat and took it bouncing down the slope in a cloud of dust and gravel till it came to rest in the bottom.
There was a looong silence, and then my buddy, who was only a few feet from me but out of sight around the spur, whispered "Is that you down there, Jim?" I guess he was shocked, but I wasn't able to answer - I was hanging on for dear life with both hands, praying the little ledge I was holding wouldn't break off, and trying to get a foot hold, to answer him. When I got toe holds, I told him I was sort of OK, but was going to have trouble getting down. Well, getting down slowly, anyway. DOWN wasn't a problem - SLOW was. Most of the places I'd used as holds to get up there were gone.
I worked my way sideways and finally down, and learned that going down was harder than going up - most of the time you couldn't see where to place your feet and had to feel your way.
When I finally got off the cliff, I found that the insides of both arms were bruised from wrist to shoulder, I guess it was from falling into the face of the cliff when my foothold disappeared.
When I was down, I promised I was done with rock climbing.
The next time we visited the canyon, we went up the outside route, following the rim. That was better - I avoided the edges. I still found a way to be stupid though.
Ever roll a big rock down a steep slope or over a drop-off? It is great fun and in those less-PC days when there were far fewer folks out in the boonies it was a popular sport, so we started rolling stuff into the canyon.
Where I was, the desert/canyon lip wasn't too abrupt. The edge dropped away for a hundred feet or so at about a 30-40 degree angle, and then terminated in a flat shelf and then a sheer drop. Rolling rocks down that slope let them get up a bit of speed before they went airborn of the shelf.
The addictive part of the game is finding bigger and bigger rocks to roll, and eventually I found a BIG rock poised towards the top of a steeper slope and a smaller ledge. It took a lot of work, but I finally got it rolling. I was standing on the slope watching it when it bounced up and came down on the cliff edge - and the slab forming the edge and holding back the whole slope I was on shifted and the whole slope behind it - and me - slid down a few feet.
No. I don't like heights anymore. They scare me.
TBC
One place I liked was Jump Creek Canyon, out SW of Nampa, a deep, narrow and interesting slot in that sandstone country.
I was told that the pigeons on the rim looked like sparrows from below, that depths & distances were hard to judge, and that the sandstone was treacherous. Trial & error proved all of those things true..
Going in from the mouth of the canyon, you had a choice of climbing the floor or going up the outside and exploring the tops of the walls. We did both, various times.
I have mentioned I don't like heights: that canyon is one reason. Picture high sandstone cliffs dropping onto a steep slope of debris that slanted into a narrow streambed at the bottom and formed a stylized "V" in cross section.
Two of us hiked up the creek bed in the bottom, climbing and exploring the ledges and hollows in the walls above the slopes of debris. We spotted what appeared to be a cave part way up one of the walls and decided to try climbing to it, but disagreed as to the best way up.
My friend started climbing from right below the cave but I moved around a spur of rock to the right and saw a series of small ledges that looked like an easy climb. I dumped my jacket & some extra junk at the base and started up.
I guess I was was maybe 25-30 above the debris slope when I ran out of ledges, so I stopped to survey the situation, standing on one small ledge and holding on to another with both hands. That's when the ledge my feet were on peeled off the cliff.
The big chunk of sandstone landed on my coat and took it bouncing down the slope in a cloud of dust and gravel till it came to rest in the bottom.
There was a looong silence, and then my buddy, who was only a few feet from me but out of sight around the spur, whispered "Is that you down there, Jim?" I guess he was shocked, but I wasn't able to answer - I was hanging on for dear life with both hands, praying the little ledge I was holding wouldn't break off, and trying to get a foot hold, to answer him. When I got toe holds, I told him I was sort of OK, but was going to have trouble getting down. Well, getting down slowly, anyway. DOWN wasn't a problem - SLOW was. Most of the places I'd used as holds to get up there were gone.
I worked my way sideways and finally down, and learned that going down was harder than going up - most of the time you couldn't see where to place your feet and had to feel your way.
When I finally got off the cliff, I found that the insides of both arms were bruised from wrist to shoulder, I guess it was from falling into the face of the cliff when my foothold disappeared.
When I was down, I promised I was done with rock climbing.
The next time we visited the canyon, we went up the outside route, following the rim. That was better - I avoided the edges. I still found a way to be stupid though.
Ever roll a big rock down a steep slope or over a drop-off? It is great fun and in those less-PC days when there were far fewer folks out in the boonies it was a popular sport, so we started rolling stuff into the canyon.
Where I was, the desert/canyon lip wasn't too abrupt. The edge dropped away for a hundred feet or so at about a 30-40 degree angle, and then terminated in a flat shelf and then a sheer drop. Rolling rocks down that slope let them get up a bit of speed before they went airborn of the shelf.
The addictive part of the game is finding bigger and bigger rocks to roll, and eventually I found a BIG rock poised towards the top of a steeper slope and a smaller ledge. It took a lot of work, but I finally got it rolling. I was standing on the slope watching it when it bounced up and came down on the cliff edge - and the slab forming the edge and holding back the whole slope I was on shifted and the whole slope behind it - and me - slid down a few feet.
No. I don't like heights anymore. They scare me.
TBC
| HOM: My Apologies | for everyone |
It has been an odd few weeks, and the zig in my ongoing biography has affected my HOM in here. I don't seem to be able to ramble freely down the corridors of my history while the present is distracting me so much.
Trying to come to terms with Dad and my relationship with him now that it he is gone is distracting. I keep stumbling over many little positive/negative things about him that I didn't know and probably won't share.
Part of the distraction has also been our searching for documentation. Dad thought he had left things wrapped up tidily, but he left some very loose ends.
Searching through the old house is stirring up a lot of memories and the disparate dates and facts I have been digging out mean I am going to have to make some corrections in some of the dates & places I have posted here. Mom was a packrat, and stored a wealth of old obituaries/wedding announcements/etc that are correcting some of my misconceptions and faulty memories. When I resume the story it may have a different flavor.
Trying to come to terms with Dad and my relationship with him now that it he is gone is distracting. I keep stumbling over many little positive/negative things about him that I didn't know and probably won't share.
Part of the distraction has also been our searching for documentation. Dad thought he had left things wrapped up tidily, but he left some very loose ends.
Searching through the old house is stirring up a lot of memories and the disparate dates and facts I have been digging out mean I am going to have to make some corrections in some of the dates & places I have posted here. Mom was a packrat, and stored a wealth of old obituaries/wedding announcements/etc that are correcting some of my misconceptions and faulty memories. When I resume the story it may have a different flavor.
| My Urban Survival Tool Kit: Evolution & Update | for everyone |
What I Carry: an old post, updated. Whether at home or at work, I almost always wear a leather pouch on my belt and use its contents daily. Sometimes the contents change. Tool kits evolve, and new technology speeds the process a bit.
KEPT: Smith & Wesson 3500 Frame Lock Stainless Tanto folder: The simplicity, strength & design are perfect for me. One-hand operation for opening and closing, and the tanto point is perfect for working with boxes & labels and strong enough for use as a light-duty pry bar. The 3550S has the serrated edge & is a bit better if you work a lot with ropes & cords.
REPLACED: Mini-Mag flashlight with a Terralux LED conversion unit. Now, a Fenix L2D-CE (Cree Edition LED) Digital LED Flashlight is my choice. Slightly smaller than the Mini-Mag, but 6 Output levels, letting me go from battery-conserving low-light to blinding 135 Lumens. Added features of strobe light and SOS signal flash, pushbutton for better one-hand operation than the Mini.
REPLACED: Gerber Multiplier. Now, I carry a LEATHERMAN Charge Ti. Better One-hand operation, you do not need to open the pliers to use the other tools. One-hand knife blade convenience plus all the Gerber features.
KEPT: Victorinox SwissChamp knife. With two blades, Can opener with small screwdriver, Bottle opener with large screwdriver & wire stripper, Scissors, Pliers with wire cutter, Wood saw, Fish scaler with hook disgorger & ruler, Metal saw with metal file & nail file, Magnifying glass, Reamer with sewing eye, Phillips screwdriver, etc, it is used for precise work.
ADDED: Brunton Echo 7x18 Pocket Scope. 7X magnification; 18 mm objective; 15" close focus so I can use it for distance viewing or up-close magnification; 2.6 mm exit pupil; 12 mm eye relief; F.O.V. @ 1,000 yds. is 181 ft. Measures 1 1/3 x 3 1/3", weighs only 1.8 ozs.
If you noted that I emphasize one-handed operation and wondered why, it is because usually I have hold of something in one hand and can't put it down till I use the appropriate tool on it. I believe this is referred to as either stupidity, bad planning, or lack of foresight.
When I am boonie-bound, I add a sheath knife, lighter & compass to the above load. More on them later.
KEPT: Smith & Wesson 3500 Frame Lock Stainless Tanto folder: The simplicity, strength & design are perfect for me. One-hand operation for opening and closing, and the tanto point is perfect for working with boxes & labels and strong enough for use as a light-duty pry bar. The 3550S has the serrated edge & is a bit better if you work a lot with ropes & cords.
REPLACED: Mini-Mag flashlight with a Terralux LED conversion unit. Now, a Fenix L2D-CE (Cree Edition LED) Digital LED Flashlight is my choice. Slightly smaller than the Mini-Mag, but 6 Output levels, letting me go from battery-conserving low-light to blinding 135 Lumens. Added features of strobe light and SOS signal flash, pushbutton for better one-hand operation than the Mini.
REPLACED: Gerber Multiplier. Now, I carry a LEATHERMAN Charge Ti. Better One-hand operation, you do not need to open the pliers to use the other tools. One-hand knife blade convenience plus all the Gerber features.
KEPT: Victorinox SwissChamp knife. With two blades, Can opener with small screwdriver, Bottle opener with large screwdriver & wire stripper, Scissors, Pliers with wire cutter, Wood saw, Fish scaler with hook disgorger & ruler, Metal saw with metal file & nail file, Magnifying glass, Reamer with sewing eye, Phillips screwdriver, etc, it is used for precise work.
ADDED: Brunton Echo 7x18 Pocket Scope. 7X magnification; 18 mm objective; 15" close focus so I can use it for distance viewing or up-close magnification; 2.6 mm exit pupil; 12 mm eye relief; F.O.V. @ 1,000 yds. is 181 ft. Measures 1 1/3 x 3 1/3", weighs only 1.8 ozs.
If you noted that I emphasize one-handed operation and wondered why, it is because usually I have hold of something in one hand and can't put it down till I use the appropriate tool on it. I believe this is referred to as either stupidity, bad planning, or lack of foresight.
When I am boonie-bound, I add a sheath knife, lighter & compass to the above load. More on them later.
| HOM: NNC - Round Two | for everyone |
If you are looking for chronological order here - forget it! All I can say for sure is that this stuff mostly happened during my first session at NNC, post-HS, pre-USN, with a bit of fill-in added.
When the car came to school, so did camping and hunting gear. This was in the innocent days when guns were an accepted part of society and merely being young and in possession of one did not make you an automatic felon. (Maybe "innocent days" is the wrong term - maybe "the era when common sense was commoner" is more accurate!)
I don't remember the .22 rifle for sure, but I brought my two pistols, the .22 target pistol from MSU and a Ruger .41 magnum Blackhawk revolver.
(I bought the Blackhawk at The Sportsman. I wanted a centerfire revolver and at that time good ones were hard to find. The Blackhawk was the only one for sale in town. It was the short barreled model and the serial number was #435 - a very low SN that would make it worth more today than I paid for it!)
I think the rifle was a Savage/Anschutz 141, a very pretty imported bolt action rifle that I also picked up at the Sportsman. I sold the Nylon .22 to buy it.
(Fill-in. I was always on the quest for the perfect gun - the one I could not miss with. It took me a long time to realize that "I" needed to be perfect, not the gun! My first handgun was a pretty little single-action Ruger Bearcat I got when I was in high school. It was replaced by a Ruger Standard Auto .22 & the Bearcat was sold to classmate Jack Mckay. Later, I sold the Standard to classmate Harold Clarke so I could get the High Standard target pistol.)
(When I got the Standard, I was out fishing and playing on the slough, ran into Uncle Rudy and showed it to him. he said it was "Skookum" - my first encounter with that word.)
In that high desert country around Nampa, jackrabbits & rattlesnakes were common, so we used to go out hunting for them a lot. One trip is etched into memory!
Three of us were out near Kuna plinking and hunting, myself, Walt M., and Don J., another friend. Walt was using my .41 & I used my .22 target pistol for a while, then we traded. It was a fortunate move!
Walt was climbing around looking for a clear shot at something when he stumbled. The .22 went off into his leg. If it had been the 41, it might have been a fatal wound . . .
We got him into the car and headed for the hospital on the NNC campus. I pushed that poor little Ford harder than I have any car, ever, and it seemed like we were crawling even though we slid on the corners - and the brakes gave out as we reached the hospital! They lasted just long enough - we bounced over the curb and stopped on the sidewalk. (That hospital is now the NNU Fine Arts Building.)
Walt was laid up for a long time. The bullet went into the top of his thigh, hit the bone, traveled down, and lodged just above his knee. The impact split the bone lengthwise.
Had it been the .41, with handloaded 210 grain hollow-points, he would probably have lost his leg & maybe his life. Was it the gun's fault? No, guns, like cars, require care for safe use. It was Walt's goofup and he only blamed himself.
Later on, when I told Donal about this episode, he only commented that for getting such a late start at experience I was piling it on pretty quickly. True statement, I guess.
TBC
When the car came to school, so did camping and hunting gear. This was in the innocent days when guns were an accepted part of society and merely being young and in possession of one did not make you an automatic felon. (Maybe "innocent days" is the wrong term - maybe "the era when common sense was commoner" is more accurate!)
I don't remember the .22 rifle for sure, but I brought my two pistols, the .22 target pistol from MSU and a Ruger .41 magnum Blackhawk revolver.
(I bought the Blackhawk at The Sportsman. I wanted a centerfire revolver and at that time good ones were hard to find. The Blackhawk was the only one for sale in town. It was the short barreled model and the serial number was #435 - a very low SN that would make it worth more today than I paid for it!)
I think the rifle was a Savage/Anschutz 141, a very pretty imported bolt action rifle that I also picked up at the Sportsman. I sold the Nylon .22 to buy it.
(Fill-in. I was always on the quest for the perfect gun - the one I could not miss with. It took me a long time to realize that "I" needed to be perfect, not the gun! My first handgun was a pretty little single-action Ruger Bearcat I got when I was in high school. It was replaced by a Ruger Standard Auto .22 & the Bearcat was sold to classmate Jack Mckay. Later, I sold the Standard to classmate Harold Clarke so I could get the High Standard target pistol.)
(When I got the Standard, I was out fishing and playing on the slough, ran into Uncle Rudy and showed it to him. he said it was "Skookum" - my first encounter with that word.)
In that high desert country around Nampa, jackrabbits & rattlesnakes were common, so we used to go out hunting for them a lot. One trip is etched into memory!
Three of us were out near Kuna plinking and hunting, myself, Walt M., and Don J., another friend. Walt was using my .41 & I used my .22 target pistol for a while, then we traded. It was a fortunate move!
Walt was climbing around looking for a clear shot at something when he stumbled. The .22 went off into his leg. If it had been the 41, it might have been a fatal wound . . .
We got him into the car and headed for the hospital on the NNC campus. I pushed that poor little Ford harder than I have any car, ever, and it seemed like we were crawling even though we slid on the corners - and the brakes gave out as we reached the hospital! They lasted just long enough - we bounced over the curb and stopped on the sidewalk. (That hospital is now the NNU Fine Arts Building.)
Walt was laid up for a long time. The bullet went into the top of his thigh, hit the bone, traveled down, and lodged just above his knee. The impact split the bone lengthwise.
Had it been the .41, with handloaded 210 grain hollow-points, he would probably have lost his leg & maybe his life. Was it the gun's fault? No, guns, like cars, require care for safe use. It was Walt's goofup and he only blamed himself.
Later on, when I told Donal about this episode, he only commented that for getting such a late start at experience I was piling it on pretty quickly. True statement, I guess.
TBC
| Suicide? | for everyone |
Almost - I had this sudden impulse...
My daughter & grandson were leaving. The loss of her grandfather and the declining size of her family depress her and worry her. She worries about me.
So, being me, I said goodby to them out front by their truck, and they were watching me walk back to the store when I had this sudden impulse to grab my chest, stagger, fall against the building, slide down to the sidewalk, convulse a bit, act out the whole heart attack routine....
Then I had this sudden vision of my daughter spending her life in prison for murder - cause she would have KILLED me when she came running up and I started laughing.
Like I said, a sudden impulse, easily overcome.
My daughter & grandson were leaving. The loss of her grandfather and the declining size of her family depress her and worry her. She worries about me.
So, being me, I said goodby to them out front by their truck, and they were watching me walk back to the store when I had this sudden impulse to grab my chest, stagger, fall against the building, slide down to the sidewalk, convulse a bit, act out the whole heart attack routine....
Then I had this sudden vision of my daughter spending her life in prison for murder - cause she would have KILLED me when she came running up and I started laughing.
Like I said, a sudden impulse, easily overcome.
| \ |
| HOM: NNC - BC & AC | for everyone |
I guess it is time to start this again. The cycle of life goes on . . .
I wish that, like a friend of mine, I had kept diaries. It would be a lot easier and more accurate - actually, it would be done! All I would need to do is pass them on to someone else to transcribe. Oh well, this way I can leave out what I want and distort whatever I please.
Reading back over this, I only hope I gave an undistorted account of Dad. I tried to be impartial, though I probably didn't have the distance to be, but those that knew him best said my accounts seemed accurate.
Anyway. the story goes on.
NNC - Before Car & After Car
I don't remember when I brought my car to Nampa. It may have been as early as Christmas of 1965 or it may have been as late as the fall of '66. I tend to think it was '66 as most of my car related memories were of friends from that second NNC year.
All I know is that having a car there expanded my horizons a lot, allowing me to explore & hunt in the desert and gain more experience at many things and did not help my grades.
TBC
I wish that, like a friend of mine, I had kept diaries. It would be a lot easier and more accurate - actually, it would be done! All I would need to do is pass them on to someone else to transcribe. Oh well, this way I can leave out what I want and distort whatever I please.
Reading back over this, I only hope I gave an undistorted account of Dad. I tried to be impartial, though I probably didn't have the distance to be, but those that knew him best said my accounts seemed accurate.
Anyway. the story goes on.
NNC - Before Car & After Car
I don't remember when I brought my car to Nampa. It may have been as early as Christmas of 1965 or it may have been as late as the fall of '66. I tend to think it was '66 as most of my car related memories were of friends from that second NNC year.
All I know is that having a car there expanded my horizons a lot, allowing me to explore & hunt in the desert and gain more experience at many things and did not help my grades.
TBC
| Dad Died Yesterday. | for everyone |
He apparently died of a heart attack while he was out getting wood from the shed. It is possible that he slipped and fell and the effort of trying to get back up was too much for him. He was 90 years old.
It was one day short of the second anniversary of Mom's death: I do not think that was a coincidence. Dad has been consumed by loneliness since she died. I pray that he is at peace now.
I am at a loss for words. I feel both loss & relief. I am glad his loneliness and frustration are over.
I loved him. I respected him as the most honest and hard-working man I ever knew. He always did what he thought was right, and always did his best.He lived life on his terms.
I know he loved me, I know he was proud of me, though he never told me so.
I wish I was half the man he was in many ways.
I wish with all my heart that our personalities and circumstances had allowed us to be closer friends.
My world is a lesser place today.
It was one day short of the second anniversary of Mom's death: I do not think that was a coincidence. Dad has been consumed by loneliness since she died. I pray that he is at peace now.
I am at a loss for words. I feel both loss & relief. I am glad his loneliness and frustration are over.
I loved him. I respected him as the most honest and hard-working man I ever knew. He always did what he thought was right, and always did his best.He lived life on his terms.
I know he loved me, I know he was proud of me, though he never told me so.
I wish I was half the man he was in many ways.
I wish with all my heart that our personalities and circumstances had allowed us to be closer friends.
My world is a lesser place today.
| HOM: NNC - Round One, learning | for everyone |
This first year was a learning year, and most of the lessons were outside the classrooms.
I learned a little about SCUBA diving from Bill, who was a certified diver. Out at Lake Lowell, he rigged me up with tank, fins and instructions and let me explore underwater a bit.
I learned to play pingpong in the dorm.
I learned that if I put my fingers around the edge of the paddle itself I could get a fine blood blister from hitting the table when I tried to chop the ball. I learned that shoes with slick soles would let you fall flat on your face in a hotly-contested game. I learned that a fast low serve worked better if you didn't ram your knuckles into the edge of the table. I learned several new words that were PG rated versions of words I already knew!
I learned that watching OTHER folks make those mistakes was funnier than when I made them!
I learned that taking a corner too fast when you were riding a bicycle on concrete was a sure fire disaster, and that if you landed hard enough you could actually break the handlebars.
I learned that telling a classmate she looked younger than the grade school kids she was working with wasn't a compliment and would cause her to not speak to me again.
I learned that Head Residents of dorms were pretty close to psychic, or else had a good espionage system....
The Psychic HR thing came home to me when a buddy & I got fed up with a fellow in the dorm. We pushed the fellow's VW bug out into the middle of Kurtz Park, jacked it up, took the wheels off, put them flat under the car and lowered it back down on them. Then we covered the thing in whipped cream and toilet paper so it looked like a big ice cream sundae out in the trees. Finally we emulated good little guerrillas and vanished back into the general populace.
I was in the dorm lobby when the victim discovered his car and came running in to complain to the HR, I listened with interest to his description (exaggerated) of the damage to his VW and Al Haynes' outpouring of sympathy and promises of justice to him. However, when the VW man left, Al turned, poked his finger in my chest and said he hoped the guy never found out that I was really the one responsible! (Later I realized that VW man had caused Al problems in the dorm and Al thought a dose of his own medicine might do him good.)
Bill was an instigator in the VW plot, but he was shocked by one of my later escapades.
I don't remember what prank I pulled to trigger this episode, but Ron & Ernie decided it would be
great fun to partially fill a big garbage can with water, lean it against our door, then pound on the door and stand back. I opened the door and got soaked from thighs down before I could dodge, and Ron & Ernie took off for their room and locked the door before I could get there.
The weather was warm, though, and they had open windows, so I rounded up a bucket of cold water outside, lined up on where it sounded like they were sitting - laughing - and let fly with it through the window. That stopped the laughing...
Why was Bill shocked? Well, remember the rugs? They were wet, he was barefoot, and it seems that his desk lamp had a short circuit he didn't know about. When he got done vibrating, I got in trouble for being the one who had started the whole thing.
Then there was the night of the cat. Finals week and a big, horny, and very vocal tom cat doing sentry duty outside the dorm was a bad combination. The cat was captured but no one knew what to do with it. The captors decided it would be funny to tie it to Al Haynes' door knob but someone piped up and said it would be funnier to get another cat, tie their tails together, and hang them over a rope stretched from Al's doorknob to the door across the hall, so he couldn't open it.
Getting a second cat seemed simple, Ron and several guys went out with a fish net looking for one that evening. No luck. They saw one run across the street into a yard behind a house, one of the guys took off after it with the net - and came flying back out from the yard with a dog snapping at his heels.
The situation got complicated when someone recognized the cat and threatened to tell the owner if it wasn't turned loose. A promise was made that the cat would be released unharmed, and it was. At least it was unharmed when it was released - out of the window of a car doing in excess of 100mph....
The next day, the cat was home again, apparently none the worse for wear, but it never again came near the dorm. I learned that cats really did have nine lives.
I learned not to answer the dorm phone by saying "Mangum, what in the hall do you want?" That was the same time I learned that school administrators sometimes called the dorms.
I learned that if someone pointed behind you at the dining room table and said "Look", when you turned back to the table you'd find little things like salt in your coke or ketchup on your ice cream or missing silverware.
I learned to say grace with one hand covering my drink and the other hovering over my plate. See above paragraph for the reason.
When I got my car down there later on, I learned that a rattling noise in the front end might be caused by rocks in the hub caps.
I learned that if you jacked up the rear of the Head Resident's car and put blocks under the axle so the tires were not quite touching the ground he would assume that his transmission was broken. (I also learned that, luckily, his ESP didn't always work!)
I learned, through boxing with Dick & Ernie. not to lead with my right and what it felt like to land in a closet if I did.
TBC
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